A jury in Norfolk County jury found Karen Read not guilty verdict on the charges of second-degree murder of Boston police officer John O’Keefe on Wednesday

Read, 45, was accused of drunkenly ramming her SUV into her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, 46, and leaving him to die in blizzard conditions on January 29, 2022.

The jury also acquitted Read of two lesser charges, motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision that caused the death. 

She was found guilty of Operating Under the Influence and sentenced to probation

Defendant sobbed as she hugged her lawyer Alan Jackson after the judge delivered the verdict

Former adjunct college professor,Karen Read sobbed in court as she was acquitted of murder over the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend in a retrial that captivated the nation.
Read, 45, was accused of drunkenly ramming her SUV into her boyfriend, former Boston police officer John O’Keefe, and leaving him to die in blizzard conditions on January 29, 2022. 
A Norfolk County jury returned a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict on the charges of murder and leaving the scene resulting in death on Wednesday. The jury also acquitted Read of two lesser charges, motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision that caused the death.
On the charge of Operating Under the Influence, she was found guilty and sentenced to probation.
Obviously relieved, the defendant sobbed as she hugged her lawyer Alan Jackson after the judge delivered the verdict.

She has long maintained her innocence and insisted that she was framed by O’Keefe’s police officer friends who were inside the house where she’d dropped him off the previous night. They were celebrating the birthday of the son of another police officer. When he returned to pick him up the next morning, She found him dead, outside the house.
O’Keefe had been serving on the Boston Police Department for 16 years. Read was a financial analyst and former Bentley University professor. The pair had been dating for two years at the time of his death.
The defense argued that investigators focused on Read because she was a ‘convenient outsider’ who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

She previously faced the charges at a trial last year that ended in a hung jury. After five days of deliberations, Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial as the jurors remained split on whether she intentionally killed her boyfriend.
As she walked out of court an innocent woman, Read who has has since garnered a cult following of supporters from the viral social media coverage and the hit HBO documentary of the case, titled ‘A body in the snow,’ was greeted by a massive crowd of pink-clad supporters chanting ‘Karen Read is free!’.

Read thanked her lawyers and supporters in a brief press conference outside of the courthouse.
‘I could not be standing here without these amazing supporters who have supported me and my team financially and more importantly emotionally for almost four years,’ she said.
‘No one has fought harder for justice for John O’Keefe than I have. Than I have, and my team.’ 
Several witnesses in the case, including those who were in the house that fateful night, released a statement calling the verdict a ‘miscarriage of justice.’
Among those witnesses were Jennifer McCabe, who made the infamous ‘How long to die in cold’ search in the early morning hours of O’Keefe’s death, as well as Brian Albert. The latter hosted the party O’Keefe died was last seen attending before he was found dead the next morning, in the snowbound driveway.
‘While we may have more to say in the future, today we mourn with John’s family and lament the cruel reality that this prosecution was infected by lies and conspiracy theories spread by Karen Read, her defense team, and some in the media. The result is a devastating miscarriage of justice,’ the statement said.

After the acquittal, Read’s supporters ecstatic with the verdict, pledged their readiness to help fight for justice for O’Keefe: ‘God, this is just. The American jury system prevailed, and the Commonwealth failed. The Commonwealth failed its people. The jury came back with a just verdict,’ said Rita Lombardi, who had been at court nearly every day.
‘This is history, and this is what ordinary people did: ordinary people raised their voices in positive and productive ways to speak truth to power.
‘My message to the people who did this to John is that you failed miserably. It’s just the beginning.’
The jury in Read’s retrial on the same charges after deliberating for at least 22 hours, since June 13, handed down its decision finding her innocent.

The prosecution case was based on the argument that Read as a scorned lover who chose to leave O’Keefe dying in the snow after striking him with her SUV outside the house party. 
Her defense countered that John O’Keefe was beaten, bitten by a dog, then left outside a home in the Boston suburb of Canton in a conspiracy orchestrated by the police that included planting evidence. 
Read’s lawyers said the investigation was mismanaged, as it focused on Read because she was a ‘convenient outsider’ who saved investigators from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

The prosecution had noted that O’Keefe and Read had been drinking with a group of friends at the Waterfall Bar and Grill in Canton – about 14 miles south of Boston, when they were invited to an afterparty.
Furthermore, Read had admitted to several alcoholic drinks beforehand, then embarking on dropping her boyfriend at the afterparty before she returning to his house.
In her interview Read told police that she woke up at 4am to find that O’Keefe never returned home, leading her to frantically drive out to try and find him.
After finding O’Keefe’s body outside the home, which party attendees claimed he never entered, first responders on the scene alleged that Read repeatedly told them she hit him while in a panicked state.

O’Keefe’s cause of death was ultimately listed as blunt force trauma and hypothermia after police say he was left outside in a blizzard. 
Read’s defense have maintained that the investigation of O’Keefe’s death was inappropriately handled by dishonorably discharged State Trooper Michael Proctor, who sent vulgar text messages about Read.
He was fired over texts that included calling Read a ‘whack job’ and a ‘c***.’
In other messages, he joked about rummaging through her phone for nude photos during the investigation, and remarked that she had ‘no a**.’

In his closing arguments, defense attorney Alan Jackson once again hit out at Proctor, arguing that the prosecution could only feign a case because ‘their investigation was flawed from the start because their investigator was corrupted from the start by bias, personal loyalties.’
He also argued that experts agree ‘there was no collision,’ and concluded by saying ‘reasonable doubt abounds.’
But prosecutor Hank Brennan said the story of how O’Keefe died is ‘simple.’
‘Ms. Read was with Mr. O’Keefe and she got drunk. She drank. She was two to three times over the legal limit and they went to a party, an afterparty and they were fighting.
‘…She got drunk, she hit him, she left him to die. It’s that simple.’